see here for Linux printing
You see printers have gone the way of Winmodems. Back in the day printeres were expensive because they required proccessing power to print out postscript documents. (ie a postscript capable printer).
Often with the original Macs you would end up owning printers that would have more powerfull proccessors then the computers that you printed from.
But they try to move as much of the circuitry out of the box and emulate it in software. So that like Winmodems they are stripped of their hardware and need very special drivers to work. That's why we got such a cheap printers now, they are mostly plastic boxes with a couple motors.
Now the more expensive the printer, the more likely it is that it will work well with Linux. (as is with most hardware)
Out of the cheap consumerable printers you want to get 2 brands: Epson, HP. They have active Linux support.
The ones you want to aviod are: Canon, Lexmark, and Brothers.
For best color quality get Epson, for normal use get HP.
Sorry.
For setting up printers to network between Windows and Linux you have 2 choices.
The simple choice is to setup SAMBA, which is Linux's compatability software to work with Windows File and Printing services.
Linux can serve a Linux printer to Windows, and Windows can serve a Windows printer to Linux.
The 2nd choice is to setup IPP (internet printing protocol). I like this because it doesn't require to setup all the extra support for file services and stuff like that. It would be the same as setting up a network printer.
Linux will make a good IPP print server, and all Windows newer then Win98 should be able to use it. I've setup my HP on Linux to serve to a w2k pro OS well. I don't know if you can setup a IPP print server using just home/desktop versions of Windows. I think you need to have a server version. I am not sure.
If you have a compatable printer you can use Linux and works well. Very high quality potentially. I had a ancient printer once that I used that printed out higher quality with Linux then Windows. You can even use it as a RIP server for high quality/profesional stuff with some printers.
But unfortunately most consumer level Canon printers are just out. You could still set it up to work over SMB from a Windows machine.
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